Java Corrupted Saviors [Release 54] [CSDev]

[subli]

I never down all 3 that much. Usually just 2.

 

[picobyte]

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is out

 

[tpk]

I have been so busy IRL that I haven't been able to play the 3 last updates :C

 

[dusty stu]

Can someone post a synopsis of possible H scenes?

 

[vilhelm69]

I have tried this game several times and for several hours and tried to follow the included help document. What am I doing wrong? I never seem to make any real progress with breaking the girls or grabbing them for very long. Have had a campaign finish with like only one break. Is there something I am missing?

 

[tetrisedris]

Can someone post a synopsis of possible H scenes?

i'd guess around 40 unique ones, but its not easy to count: there's at least 9 different ones for each battle, and one for every evening of the main story spanning a month (but only if your opponents meet certain criteria).
Then there's the "breaks", which are 4 types with 5 levels, each having a scene on how the hero breaks, but again, only triggered if you check all the marks, and the heroines can also possibly interact with eachother during and after battle, but only if you break them in certain ways.
and all of these scenes are flavoured by the personality system, and if you completely degrade a hero, they become a "fallen", and get entirely new scenes.
(also i think this game is a grind or i just suck at it, but try the cheats at the end of the campaign)

 

[Doctor Shark]

It seems like the new Capture / Surround functionality is broken. I have a character with a possible one turn Surround and I'm hitting the purple "Capture" button and getting a 1 turn Surround.

It might be related to another bug I'm experiencing, though, which is that I'm having Defiler+ actions end early. For example, one character is Inseminated for 6 more turns. Second character is not surrounded and has no adaptations. Third character does have Slaughter but just finished a Surround the turn before. They have a Level 14 Opening. I re-Surround them for a 6 turn Inseminate+. Third character uses Regenerate on her turn. Other two characters have the Inseminate+ text but find an opening to escape at the end.

 

[subli]

I have tried this game several times and for several hours and tried to follow the included help document. What am I doing wrong? I never seem to make any real progress with breaking the girls or grabbing them for very long. Have had a campaign finish with like only one break. Is there something I am missing?

There is something you're doing wrong, but without more information its not possible to tell what. Can you tell us a little more about how your battles go?

 

[somethingobn]

I cant seem to be able to use my forsaken in any game modes. Is there something specific i have to do to enable that?

 

[Roseys]

Honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing and ended up playing single player mode before campign, woops.

This game kind of makes me think yet I'm also like eeeh. So much info to remember but still playing anyways.

 

[Draonir]

I'm also having trouble getting something of a success in this game. I tried it several times but it somehow doesn't accumulate to much.

 

[Celerarity]

There's quite a few guides that have been written in this thread, have you tried reading them?

 

[fooled123]

Can someone please explain "Overall Corruption Process" in the Info section? Not sure what this indicates or if it's even important. Just trying to figure this game out on my own is proving a little difficult haha.

 

[Name36346]

Can someone please explain "Overall Corruption Process" in the Info section? Not sure what this indicates or if it's even important. Just trying to figure this game out on my own is proving a little difficult haha.

It is a quick and brief overview about the state of team's vulnerabilities (which of them are already broken). Just a convenience thing, letting you check this info without having to dive into individual profiles of girls, nothing more.

 

[Doctor Shark]

There's a patched version on the Subscribestar (you don't need to be a subscriber to download) that fixes the issue with Defiler+ and Orgy actions ending early. Apparently it was tied to Networked Consciousness.

Can someone please explain "Overall Corruption Process" in the Info section? Not sure what this indicates or if it's even important. Just trying to figure this game out on my own is proving a little difficult haha.
View attachment 1736684

It's basically a checklist of what Vulnerabilities you've broken.

Breaking those vulnerabilities tends to grant one time Evil Energy bonuses. Additionally, with each break that Vulnerability becomes easier to influence. A character with no breaks in Morality will have four or five total bars between Fear and Hate. Every tier broken will give an additional bar to one or both sides, which means she takes more damage from attacks that affect those stats.

 

[fooled123]

It is a quick and brief overview about the state of team's vulnerabilities (which of them are already broken). Just a convenience thing, letting you check this info without having to dive into individual profiles of girls, nothing more.

There's a patched version on the Subscribestar (you don't need to be a subscriber to download) that fixes the issue with Defiler+ and Orgy actions ending early. Apparently it was tied to Networked Consciousness.



It's basically a checklist of what Vulnerabilities you've broken.

Breaking those vulnerabilities tends to grant one time Evil Energy bonuses. Additionally, with each break that Vulnerability becomes easier to influence. A character with no breaks in Morality will have four or five total bars between Fear and Hate. Every tier broken will give an additional bar to one or both sides, which means she takes more damage from attacks that affect those stats.

So the "+2 T1 T2 T3 T4" markers indicate how close each of those Vulnerabilities is to being fully broken? Either way, thanks for the reply. Makes a bit more sense now.

 

[CSdev]

First thing that jumps to the eyes is that every added feature/mechanic which involves active gameplay adds a layer of complexity to the game, further requiring text/guides to ensure the player knows what does what, thus comes verbosity the first problem and two, intended vs actual feature texts.

the first one, verbosity, is extermely time consuming, but the reward of it will be fewer questions to answer and increasing the accessibility to new players. i doubt if i joined the train at version 35 i would have wanted to play this game, because games like cataclysm dark days ahead or ostraunauts have the same infuriating (my opinion) gimmick of dropping the player in the middle of a humongous amount of features, which are extremely customizable. These games are: figure shit out on your own via trials and errors. so whats good about those games? Immersion. kinda like project zomboid too. the point IS figuring shit out to simulate realism.
Your game, like CDDA, is unique in how the player interacts with not only npcs, but the program itself.
So, you lack the immersion of those games, the players lack any prior knowledge of similar games so they need to read the instructions first, and finally, the entire game is pointed toward optimisation by the player via pressure of time limit, timed event and limited ressources.
Therefore, it is important that the guides and such be short, compact, straight to the point.

If only your game had loading screens, you could just shove a whole lot of those tips in them, you already do it a bit, but maybe having a lil imp secretary whose purpose is to spew some more fact INSIDE the game and not in a file outside it COULD bring more immersion and less ikea instruction like mechanics to new players.

Another solution would be to hire volunteers or pay for people to make your texts compact and straight to the point, unless you wish to spend some time doing it, time you could want to spend adding more features/bugfixes.


which brings me to my second point, intended vs actual feature texts.
In your guide, there are a lot of things you added that the player can figure out by themselves, like the toggle off graphic violence or: "The main challenge of this game is identifying which strategies will work best against the set of personalities for the current playthrough[...]
You can make some guesses about what the target is vulnerable to depending on what sort of personality she seems to have."

I feel like you mixed-in tutorial and walktrough information in your guide. By answering every questions, people become despondant and stop searching for that one answer for their one question they had.

My advice for you would be to open up the game, and imagine like you know nothing about it. inspect and examine the options: Single play, campaign, load game, import, tutorial, options, customize, scenes, about.
Note what becomes obvious for the player, and then remove it from the guide.

The second advice would be for you to open up the guide after having removed the redundant feature, and think: what part of it is telling and what should be showing instead.

I could go in detail about the difference between showing and telling, but i'll use your in game text to speed up the process






Prophet is pushed onto her hands and knees and then pelted with garbage while the watching Thralls laugh and cheer. Several of the Thralls enjoy the show so much that they begin masturbating, and Prophet can only glare into the ground as she hears their lewd comments. Some others have some more niche desires, tickling her and enjoying her increasingly strained efforts to avoid showing any reaction.

Prophet just tries to stay calm and present a brave face. However, with the abuse accumulating, this can't last forever.


First Time Reaching 1000 HATE
Prophet has always been a hardheaded, stubborn person, but she follows a rigid code of ethics that requires her to sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of others. Her conceptions of right and wrong aren't based on her own personal convictions, which means that it only takes a bit of hatred for the people she's supposed to save to make her start to question whether they're worth it.

The Thralls have torn open Prophet's wife-beater so that she needs to devote one hand to keeping everything covered. She frowns with exertion and anger.

The texts that are written strike-through is telling text While the text that is normal are showy texts
The most flagrant example is this one:
Prophet just tries to stay calm and present a brave face. However, with the abuse accumulating, this can't last forever.

If we are meant to roleplay as the BBEG of the world, going back and forth between witnessing the effects of our actions and being told by EL mighty NARRATOR what is happening feels odd.

a more showy way to rewrite it all would be:


Prophet is pushed onto her hands and knees and then pelted with garbage while the watching Thralls laugh and cheer. Aroused by the situation, several of the Thralls hastily plunge their hands into their pants to stroke their aching needs. Prophet can only glare into the ground as she hears their lewd comments. Some others prefer to tickle her, greatly enjoying the way she fails to remain stoic, flinching and squirming under the assault.

Prophet tries to stay calm and present a brave face as she hopes for the abuse to come to an end shortly.

First Time Reaching 1000 HATE

Prophet always tought of the greater good, finding in it the strenght and resolve necessary to fight you and your thralls. Her blind devotion to do what she has been told was good shielded her from acknowledging that evil lies within everyone, yet her struggle against you has got her wondering. Could it be that some people aren't worth saving? Isn't it unfair how she has to make the most sacrifice while everyone else reap the benefits?
She shakes those toughts out of her head, as she heads back into the fray... but they aren't going anywhere.



So now comes the advice: what part of it is telling and what should be showing instead.
obviously, it is hard to SHOW anything in a GUIDE. but maybe... that's just it. If you feel like a part of your guide would work great in a showy manner, maybe find a way to add it into the game instead.

So there you go, I hope you find something interesting in this post.

Thank you for the in-depth reply! Overwhelming new players with complexity right from the start is indeed one of the main pitfalls I'm worried about. I'm making an effort to avoid adding more systems that new players have to learn before getting used to the base mechanics. Of the past ten updates, four were focused on postgame content (Forsaken), two on alternative victory conditions (which new players can ignore), two on campaign mode, one on adding vignettes (pure flavor), and one on adding images to the interface. So, I don't think your worries about the game becoming worse for new players by version 35 are likely to come true.

I'll take your feedback regarding the helpfulness of the in-game text into account, but I've also gotten directly conflicting feedback in the past. One player has said that he likes the omniscient narration, and another just a few pages back expressed surprise that the target's vulnerabilities actually did have a correlation to her dialogue. I'm sure that the changes you propose would have been helpful for you, but not all players are the same.

One thing I want to point out is that few good games have no Tutorial. But most good games do have tutorials that integrate seamlessly into the gameplay. Take Mario's World 1-1 from Super Mario - You're not given any explicit onscreen instructions nor a level that's clearly and obviously about teaching you to do things, but it does go through the basic features with you in a way that meshes with the rest of the game.

Something that may be worth putting proper thought towards is figuring out what your "first goomba" is. In Mario that first goomba is a check to make sure you know how to jump. There's no way to get past it without pressing the A button. And because of how Mario works dying to the goomba even repeatedly isn't a terrible loss, because you just respawn at the start of World 1-1 regardless. So the game teaches you how to jump (and with block placement, teaches you about the question blocks too) without the need for an explicit tutorial.

I think for a game as complicated as CS you need a tutorial, but keeping it in a text file - the manual, basically - is probably not the optimal way to handle that. Tricking the player into wanting to go where you want them to go is the best way to do it. Maybe make the first enemy of the campaign a lone meguca who's really weak, paint the campaign button purple to draw the player's eye to it. Then you can tweak the opening meguca to sort of imply a proper, beginner strategy for corruption, without needing to explicitly write out tutorial text. The Manual is really a place for lore dumps, not tutorials.

This is a good point regarding tutorials. I had been thinking of single play mode as the "first goomba" (in order to prepare players for campaign mode), but there are too many separate things you need to learn, and not enough specific feedback as to which ones you might be missing. The problem with integrating the tutorial into campaign mode is that if the first team is really weak, it could teach the player bad habits that don't carry over well into the main game (to build on your analogy, it'd be like starting as Big Mario so that you can survive running through the goomba without learning to jump).

Currently I'm leaning toward reworking the tutorial so that it starts from the shop screen and makes it more clear that there's a resource management element to the game. I think a lot of players have been conditioned to expect that all an H-game's content can be found by just grinding the same actions repeatedly.

I disagree, the purpose of the guide is explicite, it is a guide.
SURE, a standalone Annals of Evil Deeds or something COULD be great, but this is not a fnaf/hello neighboor type of games. You don't hide clues of what is going on outside or too deep for the people to figure it all out.

As of now, imo, the game is a dark power fantasy, without the pejorative undertone, MIXED with a puzzle optimisation structure.

I feel a great way to add more lore to the game would be via gameplay elements.
the problem being, what disadvantages is there to maximise everything and break every characters T4 at day 40? i know there are some content where the chosen can escape and then you attack them with some you've captured on another loop.

but is that the only disadvantage there is to maximising, losing content? there's already so many incentive to optimize, there are no incentive other than content to slow down.

The gameplay-related incentive to not break everything is that Forsaken who haven't been completely broken are better at some things. It's mostly a campaign-related bonus, but the only way to add that sort of incentive to single play mode would be to make it harder to win via breaking everything, and I don't think people want that.

It seems like the new Capture / Surround functionality is broken. I have a character with a possible one turn Surround and I'm hitting the purple "Capture" button and getting a 1 turn Surround.

It might be related to another bug I'm experiencing, though, which is that I'm having Defiler+ actions end early. For example, one character is Inseminated for 6 more turns. Second character is not surrounded and has no adaptations. Third character does have Slaughter but just finished a Surround the turn before. They have a Level 14 Opening. I re-Surround them for a 6 turn Inseminate+. Third character uses Regenerate on her turn. Other two characters have the Inseminate+ text but find an opening to escape at the end.

My apologies for not catching this bug before release. Let me know if it's still affecting the current version.

I cant seem to be able to use my forsaken in any game modes. Is there something specific i have to do to enable that?

If they're from campaign mode, then you can only use them within that campaign mode save until the end of the campaign. After the campaign ends, they're moved so that you can use them in single play and free training as well. (The reason it has to work this way is that otherwise you could use free training to make them stronger within their campaign without spending days.)

 

[Doctor Shark]

So the "+2 T1 T2 T3 T4" markers indicate how close each of those Vulnerabilities is to being fully broken? Either way, thanks for the reply. Makes a bit more sense now.

Sort of. Every Vulnerability has Tiers 1-4 and Core Vulnerabilities also have Tier +2. The first time you break that tier the box will be permanently X'd out and various things will occur (you might get some free Evil Energy, the Chosen might start using different moves, etc.). If you look at the Chosen's individual profiles, it will tell you what is needed to break the next Tier. Some Chosen will generate with pre-broken tiers, like Prophet and her Innocence in your screenshot. You're technically right that a Vulnerability needs to have all of its Tiers broken in order to defeat a Chosen during the final battle but every Tier has its own conditions for breaking and its own effects for being broken.

 

[zertyx23]

Maybe it's not in the spirit of the game but now that we can have sex directed by us to our forsaken, maybe allowing us to customize a humanoid form could be good. I don't know how much work it can be. I would even like to see maybe a sort of RPG upgrade and add during the campaign, giving a bonus like a roguelike. All of this is probably very hard to implement, I just writing my thought here.

 

[vilhelm69]

There is something you're doing wrong, but without more information its not possible to tell what. Can you tell us a little more about how your battles go?

So I try to follow the in game guide but when I surround, even with upgraded commanders I feel like the battle is over so quickly and that I rarely ever get a break. Should I start battles with an ambush for example? And it feels like I have to constantly have one person surrounded or the battle is over and I can only do mediocre damage because everything seems to weaken the effects of everything else.